How can I make a wrought iron basket?
You can do this by using modifiers on a very simple mesh. This is the result:



Because of the complexity of this I have given general steps, which will be helpful to most people, and included the blend file at the end if there is still confusion:


Add a single vertical edge which is the height of the required basket. The origin (orange dot) is set away from the edge as it is about this point that the edge will be rotated later:





A Subsurf modifier is added, set to 'simple' subdivision to give the edge enough detail to twist. Because this mesh is so simple you can set it to something unusually high, like 5 subdivisions.
A Simple Deform modifier is added, set to twist. Increase the deform angle to twist the mesh as much as you require and adjust the limits so the ends aren't included in the twisting:





An Array modifier is added to repeat the single twisted piece of iron as many times as needed. An empty is used to control the rotation of the array - it is placed at the object origin and rotated on it's 'Z' axis (a rotation of 51.42 for an array set to 7, or 360/Array Count):





A Lattice modifier with 6 'v' divisions is added to scale up the middle and scale down the ends of the basket. The lattice is connected to the basket with the 'Lattice' modifier - scaling and moving the vertices of the lattice (in edit mode of the lattice object) will warp the basket. Here I have scaled up only the middle vertices, causing the basket to bulge: 





A Skin modifier is added to give thickness to all the edges. If the 'skin' is too thick then Tab into edit mode, select all the vertices of the basket mesh and press Ctrl+A to scale it up or down:





This is the final order of modifiers:




All modifiers can now be applied if you wish or you can just leave them all active.

Further modifiers can also be added such as a bevel modifier for beveled edges or an additional Subsurf modifier to smooth things out. 

Because of the complexity of this setup I have included the blend file here: